Pixxel

Pixxel builds hyperspectral imaging satellites. An ordinary camera records three colour bands. A hyperspectral camera records well over a hundred, enough to tell materials apart by the light they reflect. From orbit that can show crop stress, minerals and oil spills. Pixxel has six Firefly satellites in orbit, launched on SpaceX flights in January and August 2025, and sells the data through Aurora, its own analysis software.

Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal founded the company in February 2019. Its first test satellite, Shakuntala, went up on SpaceX's Transporter-4 in April 2022, and another, Anand, followed on an Indian PSLV that November. MegaPixxel, its satellite factory in Bengaluru, opened in January 2024. The first three Fireflies sent back their first images in March 2025.

Pixxel has government customers in the US and India. The US National Reconnaissance Office gave it a five-year hyperspectral data contract in 2023 and another contract in May 2026, and NASA added it to a commercial data purchase programme in 2024. In India it won a development grant through the defence ministry's iDEX scheme to build small satellites for the Air Force. It also leads the four-company consortium that IN-SPACe picked in 2025 to build and run 12 Earth observation satellites for India, without asking for government money. A $100 million Series C in September 2026 pays for Honeybee, its next constellation, and for making satellites in both India and the United States.